


Closer

by angelaiswriting



Category: Inglourious Basterds (2009)
Genre: F/M, Oral Sex, Vaginal Sex, mentions of bullet wound, mentions of murders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:47:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25484173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelaiswriting/pseuds/angelaiswriting
Summary: Stranded in a spooky village, Stiglitz confesses his feelings, but she’s caught off-guard and panics. Back at the base, though, she’d like to see where the future takes them.
Relationships: Hugo Stiglitz/Reader
Kudos: 23





	Closer

**Author's Note:**

> Italics are supposed to be German (unless it’s for emphasis). Prompts used are in bold ([link to prompt list](https://peaskyblonders.tumblr.com/post/622451655662845952/random-prompt-list), I used # 4, 5, 7, 19, 20). The title was inspired by _Closer_ by Kings of Leon: the song is not directly related, but I had it on loop while writing and it's worth a listen if you have time.  
> This was also posted on my tumblr: angelaiswriting.tumblr.com

“ **Stop whining, it’s just a bullet!** ”

The voices in the room gradually quiet down to a churchyard silence when Y/N groans, surgical pliers still poking around in the hole in Smithson Utivich’s leg and face set into a frown. English sounds weird on her tongue, almost cut down with the wrong kind of knife, and there’s no safe hiding place for her German origins.

_‘It’s just a bullet’ in_ my _fucking leg_ – they all know those are the words Utivich was about to spit out like burning venom before he opts for the safest solution, the one that lies in silence. There’s a reason if her German accent keeps on being so prominent when she speaks English and that’s because she just does _not_ speak English unless she absolutely has to. She’s more similar to Stiglitz in this than anyone would ever dare express out loud – she either speaks German or French, or she doesn’t speak at all.

“I should leave it in here,” she mutters again when Utivich’s leg jolts up and someone – Andy – has to step forward and keep it pushed down on the table. “You’d deserve it, _stupid idiot_.”

“It was an accident,” Smithson mumbles, voice low and full of embarrassment. Just half an hour ago he had been outside by a fire, drinking with the guys, until Donny convinced him to play some trick with what should have been an unloaded gun. “And you don’t _have_ to take it out, we can wait for Wicki.”

When the door opens, everybody turns into its direction holding their breath, but it’s not Wicki.

“What happened here?” Aldo asks, brows set into an unconvinced frown as his gaze lands on Utivich first and then Y/N.

“ _Stupid Americans, that’s what happened_.” But then she sighs, shrugs her shoulders, and pulls the bullet out of the man’s wound. “Children shouldn’t play with guns,” she glares. “Someone get off their ass and go call a fucking nurse.”

When half the men in the room scramble out, almost stepping on each other’s feet, Aldo Raine steps forward. He’s expression is set and unreadable as he examines Smith’s leg and a couple of minutes go by before he speaks again. “I need you and Stiglitz on a mission. I have an informer down south that says there’s a couple of Nazis you two might have the pleasure to take out.”

*

“ _How’s our exit?_ ” Stiglitz asks, crouching down next to Y/N and taking the binoculars she’s passing him. She’s tense and he can see right through her façade, right through that ‘I don’t fear this has all gone to shit’ mask she’s been wearing for the past few days.

“ _Still no sign of our guy_ ,” comes her whisper when he finally brings the field glasses to his face and stares off into the distance. “ _I’m scared, Stiglitz_ ,” she confesses right after, before that temporary bravery stops her from opening up like that. “ _I have a bad feeling about this. It’s the same I had the day we got arrested._ ”

He says nothing to that, just stares at the horizon for another minute before he hands her back the binoculars and moves to sit down, his back against the wall of the abandoned house. It’s a spooky village, the one they’re using as their hideout, and the temperature during the day has already started to scratch like an angry cat. Winter is approaching quickly and right there, in the skeleton of what was once somebody’s home, there’s no running away from it.

“ _I should have gone myself_ ,” she goes on as she scoots closer to him in search of some warmth. “ _Raine doesn’t know how these people work. You just can’t trust them. He thinks he can, but…_ ” Her rambling dies down and he knows she’s thinking back to that night she’s had to take a bullet out of Utivich’s leg. He doesn’t know how he knows, he just does. He’s worked with her long enough to just be able to understand how her mind works.

“ _We’ll get back_.” It sounds like a promise on his lips and whether he means it as such or not, it’s met with a soft sigh as she relaxes against his side, her head falling back in surrender against the wall. _We’ll get back_ , the words echo in his mind and he does his best to believe them like she at least pretends to.

Neither of them says it out loud, but that’s why they’ve always worked solo – or just with each other after they met back in Bavaria. They’re good at this, good at driving Nazis out, and even better at taking them out. Not as good as the Basterds consider them, but they get the job done and move on to the next name on the list. They jump from name to name and never collab with anyone – or so it used to be before their arrest. Now they’re made to trust other people and that’s just _not_ what they’re used to. You don’t go trust the next person; you don’t lay your life in their hands if you don’t know who they are and what they’ve done to survive.

“ _You should try and get some sleep_ ,” he says when her stomach complains. Had they known how things would go, they would have packed more food. But they’ve had to ration what little they managed to stash into their backpacks before fleeing the town Raine had sent them to, and now they have to face the consequences. “ _I’ll keep watch, wake you up in a few hours_.”

The old boards of the parquet creak under his boots when he stands up but it almost feels like those are his bones, turned cold and brittle by the still young winter. It’s surely not that long, but the last time he’s laid down feels like it belongs to a past life. A split second before he takes the first step forward, toward one of the rifles they left in a corner of the room with their stuff, her fingers wrap around his wrist and he’s rooted to the spot.

“ ** _How long has it been since you slept?_** ” She tugs his arm when she stands up, inhaling sharply when half of her weight comes to rest on the foot she sprained the day before. And even though she’s been trying to shrug it off – because that’s what she does: she clenches her jaw and moves forward, that’s how it’s always been and probably how it always will be – he knows it’s been bothering her every time they move.

And much like her, he shrugs his shoulders once, frees his hand from her gentle grasp, and moves to pick his rifle up. It’s always a comforting weight in his arms but as he peeks from the empty hole that had once been a window, the heavy clouds in the sky make it feel like some sick kind of doom.

“ _Don’t do this, Stiglitz. Don’t close me off again._ ”

He doesn’t turn around when he corrects her – _Hugo_ , not _Stiglitz_.

_You never let anyone call you that_ – that’s what the look in her eyes tells when he eventually turns around and finds her staring at him. He’s been with her long enough and after a while, you just start reading people. All the unspoken words are paint strokes on a face that’s better than an open book; on a face that’s more like a canvas.

“ _Hugo_.” The smile that stretches her lips is the tired shadow of what he knows could fool Nazis before he stepped in, his weapon of choice in his hands. “ _You go to sleep. I’m fine, really. By the looks of it_ ,” she continues, hinting at the sky with a movement of her head as she stretches her arm out for him to hand her the rifle, “ _no one will come: it’s going to start snowing soon_.”

*

He wakes up to a snow-clad scenery outside the open window – and to snowflakes dancing in the chilly air a few meters from him, in that opening (one of many) nobody’s stuck around long enough to fix. The snowflakes flutter as they fall, and it almost looks like white flour. It’s been a while since he last saw flour with his own eyes and that’s what tears him from the cozy embrace of slumber and brings him back to reality.

The smoky tendrils of a past life still alive in his dreams are still caressing the edges of his mind, though, faint echoes that mix together into unintelligible whispers. They stuff him with cotton and he needs a few minutes to feel the hard floor underneath his back, the chilly air biting at his cheekbones and nose.

There’s enough light for it to be day already and as that realization dawns down on him, wrapped as he is in his cold blanket, he jolts up to sitting.

“ _No one came, I told you_.”

His head turns to the side so quickly he gets whiplash.

“ _And it snowed all night_.” Her eyes are sunken in, her eyelids heavy with missed sleep and the constant worries that are gnawing at her from the inside and from which he still hasn’t managed to distract her. Shoulders weighed down by an invisible weight, she looks smaller and less dangerous than she really is.

“ _You didn’t wake me up_.” His voice is still drowsy; the words don’t roll as freely on his tongue, so the accusation comes out as a simple observation.

She smiles. _I never said I would_ , the faint twinkle in her eyes seems to say. “ _We’re waiting one more day_ ,” she decides as she comes to a stand, stiffened hands still holding onto the rifle she’s hugged to her chest like a child the whole night. “ _But tomorrow at dawn we’re leaving, I don’t care about Raine’s spy_.”

Silence settles again between them when she sits down next to him, in the corner further away from the chilly winds outside. They share her last chocolate bar, something she’s clung on to ever since she won it at poker more than two weeks ago. He stares at her as she eats, her head resting against the wall and her eyes closed. There’s a tear trickling down her cheek and it takes the dust that has settled on her skin away.

“ ** _I think I might be falling in love with you_**.” His confession hangs in the air, in the closed space between them. And all he can do is stare as that tear slowly rolls down her cheekbone. He can’t even remember when the last time he ate chocolate was and now that he has a piece in his hands, he can’t even chew on it.

Her eyes open slowly and she looks at him almost from underneath her lashes, her head still tilted back and at an angle. For the first time, he can’t read them as they focus on him, bore right _into_ him.

He’s a man of few words. He opens up, but only with the right people and only so much. And he knows she’s just the same – bad at opening up, but not at talking – she talks maybe too much at times and while it would annoy him if it were someone else, he’s alright with her babbling on and on. About the weather, about the next target, about how stupid people are, how hungry she is, but never about _before_. Who she was, what she did, where she lived, whom she loved – those are still well-guarded secrets, and Stiglitz is not one to pry.

“ _Don’t_.” She swallows hard eventually, almost as though she’s trying to swallow down her voice – or his confession. “ _There’s a war out there_.” Her eyes move to his right, to the blown-open window behind him on the opposite side of the room. “ _People are_ dying.” Her jaw clenches and as she swallows, he sees her struggle, her attempt at not crying. “ _If something happens…_ ”

He sits in silence, eyes set on her as hers try to avoid him. They do their best but ‘their best’ doesn’t seem to cut it, not this time.

“ _We fuck, that’s it. Just… fuck, from time to time_.” It’s a whisper and her lower lip quivers as his words still shake her bones. When did war stop being scary? When did love become something to fear? Neither of them knows. Was it the first time they killed? The first time they enjoyed it? The moment they understood they had to keep on doing it in order to survive?

When she turns to look at him, it’s a desperate animal the one sitting in front of him. Her eyes beg him to stop, to take it all back, because they both know where that _if something happens_ is bound to end. And it’s not six feet under, but rather, somewhere up there, on the surface; face up or face down into the mud, it doesn’t really matter. Maybe that’s what brought her to murder, he reasons for a second; maybe she’s lost someone she loved and that turned her into a spy and a murderer that knows no mercy.

Her hand is trembling as it digs into the pocket of his jacket, the one where she keeps cigarettes – they’re usually for him, but she never turns down a smoke, either. He knows it’s empty, for they smoked their last one two days ago, a crumpled up cigarette that seemed to last less than a minute that day.

“ _I’ll check the perimeter_ ,” he eventually says, laying the last of his chocolate bar in her hands. He doesn’t meet her eyes, doesn’t utter another word as he takes the revolver from his pallet and leaves the room.

*

Three days later they’re both back at the camp base – no resentment between them, just the usual, content silence of two people that don’t always need to talk to work just fine. But while everything seems normal on the surface and they both enjoy the welcome-back celebrations at the tavern, they’re both lost in their own thoughts.

Hugo has stopped thinking about the fact that maybe he made a mistake when he confessed his feelings to her. Because she was right – there _is_ a war out there, and it’s not even that far away, no matter how distracting the passing of shots of alcohol might now be. He stopped being a sentimentalist years ago, but if there’s a conclusion he’s come to, it’s that it’s better to spend your last days next to the people you love than running away from them.

There’s a couple of occasions in which he almost told her that.

The first was when they found a working telephone. Clothes soaked by snow and weapons now heavier than their backpacks, they sat in that empty house for hours, after calling one of Raine’s safe numbers, some French family collaborating with the Allies on the other end of the line. He had fixed the makeshift splint keeping her ankle in place and had reasoned, for the first time, that she shouldn’t have come, not this time.

The second was when they got back and the nurse managed to take her in only after the debriefing. She had smiled a _I’ll find you later_ as Wicki dragged him away and the first thought his mind could form had been that he was glad that she seemed to always be able to find him anywhere.

But even though they’re sitting right next to each other now, shoulder pressed against shoulder as everyone seems like they want to sit at the same table, he can’t turn around and shake her awake. Why would he, though?

“We thought we’d never see the two of you again!” Donowitz is tipsy already and he doesn’t seem to notice how his drink sloshes out of his glass every time he moves his arm to gesticulate as he speaks. “Fucking bastards! You have nine lives, just like cats!”

Wicki’s laughter seems to drown out the roaring of the celebrations when he laughs. “ _I told them you’d both come back on your legs, still breathing_ ,” he chuckles in German.

Y/N joins Wilhelm’s burst of laughter and then turns to her left and smiles up at him. It’s a weird thing, it reaches her eyes more than it does her lips and she seems on the verge of saying something before she shakes her head once and finishes her beer.

*

It’s midnight when she knocks at his door. Her knocking seems to echo through the whole once-abandoned house the Basterds converted into a place to stay, at least temporarily, for everyone’s still out drinking the winter away.

“ _I didn’t mean to turn you down_ ,” are the words that greet him when he opens the door. He’s still only half-dressed after the bath he’s finally managed to take. “ _Back in that house. I got scared at the idea of something that might not even happen and I’ve spent the past few days thinking about what a gigantic fool I’ve been when I said those things. You took me off-guard because I thought I’d never love again, but…_ ” She breathes in sharply and looks up at him, stares right into his eyes for the first time as she realizes she’s been rambling again. “ _Can I come in?_ ”

Hugo nods and takes a step to the side before closing the door behind her. “ _You don’t have to say anything. I understand_.”

“ _Oh, you and Wicki have a heater_.” It’s soft and he almost misses it, but it’s gone before he can reply and she’s already back on the topic she’s most likely come to discuss. “ _I don’t know what I feel for you_.” She doesn’t turn around when she speaks. Instead, she holds her hands close to the stove and sighs under her breath before she squares her shoulders again. “ _But I would like to find out, when we win this war. A while after you left, Raine started talking about how we’re all going to America when we take out the High Command and I realized that I could leave all of them behind but I couldn’t leave you_.”

“ _I never considered the idea of leaving before_.” He moves to stand next to her and hangs the towel he’s used on one of the hangers above the heater. “ _But we could_ ,” he nods, turning towards her.

She’s looking at him this time, tired eyes staring at him from an even more tired face. But before she can add anything, he pulls her in and kisses her. He’s always preferred actions over words – words can be misinterpreted, but some actions…

Her hands are trembling when they move over his hips and then up his back, over the scars ridging his skin. She’s one of the few who’ve seen them – he’s not ashamed of them, but he does feel weird at the idea of showing them to others. It felt natural with her, though, almost as though they weren’t even there to begin with, the first time they slept together fully naked. It just, _happened_ , it fell into place like anything else about her. She just fits in his arms, to his side, and when he’s inside her, his hips grinding against hers as they both lose themselves into each other and forget for a few precious moments what their survival revolves around.

“ _How’s your foot?_ ” he asks in between kisses when he picks her up to lay her down onto his bed.

“ _Foot’s fine, don’t worry about it_ ,” she laughs, her tone getting louder when he just drops her onto the mattress. Her laughter dies down when he settles between her legs, props himself up above her, his nose barely brushing hers. She smiles as he observes her, swipes his gaze across her features and breathes her in.

He contemplates saying something, but whatever innocence he had left at the beginning of his story has been swept away with his words by the things he’s done. He only moves when she speaks again – **_Kiss me_** _, Hugo_. That he does; he leans down and presses his lips against hers for a moment before his tongue comes out to swipe along her lower lip.

Her knuckles brush against his chest every time her hands move as they unbutton her shirt, a too-big garment she’s been given by God knows who. By the time she’s reached the last button and his mouth has moved down along her jaw and her neck to kiss her chest, she’s panting lightly, her hands wrapped around his biceps as he smiles against her skin.

She’s warm and smooth, even though there are irregular scars marking her skin. Just like his, they never matter, and even less when they get into bed together. His fingers just caress her and she this close to him is the only thing that truly matters in this moment. He kisses her collarbones, nudges his nose against the side of a breast before he allows himself to close his eyes and take a nipple into his mouth.

He feels the moan more than he hears it, it vibrates deep into her chest and almost buzzes against his lips as her fingers rake upward through his short hair. There’s a breathy moan of his name before his kisses and licks move lower down.

“ _I know for sure that I’m falling in love with you_.” He’s serious when he says it, fingers fumbling with the button and zipper of her pants. Then, as he drags them down her legs with her underwear, he smiles at her. Sometimes he thinks that he only remembers how to smile when she’s around, almost as though she’s always able to swap his grimace with an actual sign of happiness.

She smiles back at him – at his words, at how caringly he removes her left boot, almost as though his only priority is not to revive the dull pain in her ankle. And then at how he covers her body once again, at how he looks down at her with that unreadable expression of his that just makes her fall for him a bit more every time.

It’s not love – she doesn’t want to call it _love_ , but it sure does make her feel all warm inside as it tugs at the corners of her mouth even now, with her fingertips lightly tracing the lines of his face. Forehead, cheekbones, jaws, and then his lips, and he smirks when she outlines them.

When she pushes him onto his back and she moves over him, straddles his thighs, it’s sudden and unexpected, but surely not unwelcome, and he lets her do. His hands move up her thighs and hold onto her hips, and her bare body above him somehow makes his heart swell with pride. A thought crosses his mind, but it lasts only for a fraction of second before she leans down and pecks his lips once, and then once more – _yeah, he could do this all day every day, even in America, if it means staying by her side_.

Her lips trail down the column of his throat, then, before moving to the crook of his neck. She kisses and suckles as she grinds down against him, and he doesn’t care if he’ll have marks tomorrow – he _won’t_ , because they’re both careful, but one day he’s sure he will – and _she_ will as well.

She says something then, something he doesn’t catch, before she takes his hands in hers and moves further down his body, leaves kisses all over his chest and belly. For a moment, they both giggle, and she looks up at him with those eyes of hers that just, make him forget about the war and the Basterds and anything in-between.

She’s quick at unbuttoning his pants, but not so much at taking them off his body. She takes her time, and the lower she pulls them, the more kisses she leaves on his navel and then thighs. It’s funny and sexy at the same time, and when he’s fully naked and she’s kneeling between his legs again, that’s truly all he craves for at the moment.

“ _Come here_ ,” he says, but she shakes her head, a smirk tugging at her lips, and bends down towards him.

He’s hard in her hands and when her lips press a kiss to the underside of his dick, he groans in the back of his throat. The muscles in his thighs tense when she takes him in her mouth, and his exhale is shaky as he does his best not to move his hands over her head.

It’s slow and slippery as she focuses on the head of his dick – suckles and kisses and licks, before taking him deeper every now and then, her hand slowly working the rest of his erection. Hugo Stiglitz is rarely ever vocal in the bedroom, but when someone – when _she_ – is going down on him…

“ _Fuck_.” Quick and breathy, almost like a half-formed word, that ‘fuck’ leaves his lips when she moans around him.

His breath almost hitches in his throat when she pulls up and smiles at him while repositioning to straddle his thighs again. He’s still in her hand and no matter how hard he tries, he can’t bring himself to look away from that sight. It lasts less than he thinks it does, though, because before he has the time to move his hands over her hips again, she’s sinking down on him.

She’s warm, and wet, and when she rests her left hand on his chest to balance herself as she takes all of him into her, her hands are wet.

His hips thrust up at the mental picture of her fingering herself and as he does so, she almost loses her balance. They both giggle, but when he moves to sit up, she pushes him back down and grinds her hips against his.

“ _Stay down_ ,” she whispers against his skin, lips brushing right next to his left nipple before she leaves a kiss there.

The rhythm she sets is slow and sensual, something neither of them is used to – or _has been used to_ for a while, now. It’s a nice change compared to the usual, almost-too-quick routine that’s just hunger and desperate, _desperate_ need. It’s good, and Hugo Stiglitz finds himself relaxing underneath her, for once, hands moving from her hips to her back when she presses herself down against him. His hips start thrusting up into her, and he does his utmost best to keep it just as slow, but the feel of her around him just drives him delirious. 

Her lips latch onto his pulse point again and when she starts licking and sucking, he swears his temperature spikes up. His head leans back into the pillows, neck almost arching, and his thrusts get quicker and snappier the tighter he holds her against himself. Her breathing grows shorter and every time he thrusts up, he can hear as her moans get stuck in her throat.

It’s a while later that the door creaks open and Wicki slurs Stiglitz’s name in his drunken, post-celebratory state. Hugo hums in acknowledgment, but his eyes are closed and there’s still a smile on his lips.

“ _Hugo_ ,” Y/N whispers against the side of his neck, still naked and still laying between his arms, one leg thrown over his hips as his own leg rests between hers.

He nods his head against hers, but she knows he’s already falling asleep. They went at it again as soon as he flipped their positions over, and she should have known better than to agree on spending the night.

She whispers his name again when Wicki starts fumbling over the words of a song she doesn’t recognize, too distorted by his drunkenness. “ _Please, Hugo, you know he can’t hold his liquor!_ ”

“ _Y/N!_ ” Wicki almost yells her name when he finally switches on the light and finds her in his friend’s bed. “ _‘S good to see you again_.”

She’s quick at turning back around, pulling the blanket over herself to cover her body from the other man’s eyes. “ _Stiglitz, come on! **You need to wake up. I can’t do this without you**._” But when she tilts her head up on the pillow and her eyes land on Hugo and that faint smile of his still plastered to his lips, she knows there’s no way in hell he’s waking up again soon.

**Author's Note:**

> First time writing for this fandom; I hope Stiglitz wasn't too OOC!


End file.
